Review: Ninefox Gambit

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Disclosure: I received a free e-galley copy of this book through NetGalley.

Ninefox Gambit is certainly one of the most original and daring books I've read in a while. The premise of the story - a galactic empire that uses a kind of magic based on math and patterns - is fascinating. The core relationship between Kel and Jedao provides a solid emotional trajectory. Overall, though, I left the book feeling vaguely disappointed, both because the the premise didn't pull off as well as I'd hoped and because the character-driven story was a bit predictable.

The way the magic works is essentially confluence based on patterns of movement of either ships or soldiers that produce larger effects - like explosions, or camouflage. The scope extends beyond the military and throughout their society, as everyone in the Hexarchate follows the same calendrical patterns/schedules. It's a thoughtful metaphor for traditionalist societies where every person has their place and best serves the universe by performing their role dutifully. The main problems for me were that the patterns/formations that are used to create magical effects are abstract enough that they were usually weren't visualizable, and because the effects are magical and arbitrary, it was hard to build tension; the reader can't possible know that X formation will lead to Y effect, so when all the soldiers are getting into formation X, we don't know what that means for the next scene.

The story is driven by this magic. A rogue faction is enforcing a different calendar, and it's disrupting the very carefully woven fabric of magic that pervades the galaxy. Kel is chosen to fight this rogue faction for two reasons: first, she is a soldier who is unusually good at math; second, she suggests resurrecting the person of Jedao, a commander who went insane and killed his own troops many decades earlier. Resurrecting Jedao means incorporating him into her own mind and body, for reasons that are still unclear to me.

While the larger story of the Hexarchate is the 'pitch' story, the one that shapes the book, the core of the story is the relationship between Kel and Jedao. Kel starts remembering things that Jedao has done as if she had done them herself, and while she sees his many atrocities, she also starts to learn that the history she has been taught isn't quite right. As I mentioned above, this part of the story feels almost too familiar - an upstanding citizen must pair up with a supposedly evil traitor to defeat a common enemy, and along the way they begin to understand each other, and it's revealed that the bad guy had some good motivations all along.

It's been a while since I read the book now and I honestly can't quite remember the ending, but I would certainly read a sequel. It was a pretty enjoyable read and the most difficult part for me was that there are very few physical descriptions of anything, and it felt like I was blind while reading.

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